A brother should never be lifted from a deep sleep, from his dreams, and be told to hurry to the hospital.

But three years ago, blood spilled under a streetlight in City Heights, 14-year-old Javier Quiroz died and a family changed forever.

There is no way to plan for something like that, but how do you plan for anything after something like that? How does it not kill a person’s hope, a family’s faith?

“To this day, I ask myself the same thing,” Agustin Peña, 25, said as the Aug. 27 anniversary of his brother’s death drew near. “Yes, my blood was spilled on the streets. But this was a larger symptom of society that needs to be addressed, and I felt like I was in the best position to address it.”

So he does.

For his family. For his brother. For himself.

Anguish illuminated

On Aug. 27, 2007, Javier scored a goal in a soccer game, went swimming with friends and made plans to write and record a song the next morning for his mother’s birthday, which was still a month away.

Then late that night, he was shot three times on 52nd Street near University Avenue, moments after telling his mother by phone he was coming home to the apartment complex she managed just a few blocks away.

Waiting outside, Lidia Quiroz, 49, saw two of her son’s friends, watched as they fielded a frantic call from Javier. “Something happened to Javi!” one yelled to her. “Something happened to him!”

She heard the shots that tore through her son’s leg and arm. They sounded too close for her, a mother who sends her children to schools outside the neighborhood for safety.

She and her second husband, Florentino Quiroz, 47, sped after Javier’s friends to where he lay near the Colina Park Golf Course, shot a third time in the chest, a victim of gang violence. The light from a police helicopter illuminated their anguish.

An ambulance came and went. A friend drove the couple to the hospital. Lidia Quiroz called Peña, woke him up, said something had happened.

Motivational memories

Javier was so popular he once went to three quinceañeras in a month. Now he is a statistic, one of 28 San Diego gang homicides in 2007, one of 58 overall that year.

He is a memory, but he is also a catalyst.

His name is writ large on the back window of Peña’s SUV and on the windshield of Florentino Quiroz’s truck. It is tattooed on his father’s and Peña’s upper arms.

“En Memoria Javier Quiroz” has graced the back of his father’s soccerteam jerseys. Javier’s sister, 10-year-old Alejandra, keeps his photo by her bed. His mother talks to him still.

“He is an engine that we have at home,” Lidia Quiroz said. “Every time that I’m sad or something happens, I need money, I ask Javi, ‘Please help. You are close to God. You can help.’ ” Javier motivates Peña, perhaps, most of all.

He is the force driving Peña to talk straight to troubled kids, to become a lawyer, to spare other families the heartache of his.

Peña might become a prosecutor. Howfitting that the image on his computer desktop is Batman.

Preventing more loss

Peña was aimless once.

He skipped enough high school classes that he had to spend countless afterschool hours in his senior year to make up the credits to graduate.

Then Peña, a teenager who thought he might work in construction or fast food, became the first college graduate in his family. Then Javier’s killing spurred him to become a law student who organizes anti-violence rallies and motivates youths to make better decisions.

Before that, Peña had volunteered to help troubled youth at PowerMentor, a nonprofit organization in San Diego. He had worked as a teacher’s assistant and become a substitute teacher at San Diego Juvenile Hall.

Jose Orozco, 29, a mentor and principal at Promise Charter School in Chollas View, said Javier’s death galvanized Peña to follow Orozco to the California Western School of Law in San Diego.

“I think that his tragedy was the pivotal point for him,” Orozco said. “He realized that it was not just about how things affect him but how they affect everyone.”

Peña said: “I have to be more involved, if not to prevent future lives from being lost to senseless acts of violence then at least to keep my brother’s legacy alive, to make sure that my brother’s death wasn’t for nothing.”

Kevin LaChapelle, 44, is another of Peña’s mentors. A former El Cajon police officer, LaChapelle founded PowerMentor so kids could beat the streets.

In 2007, LaChapelle helped Peña buy a casket, kept order as hundreds of people crammed into Javier’s open-casket viewing, consoled Peña that first Christmas when he couldn’t bear to open any presents because his brother wasn’t there.

“One time he said to me, ‘I’m getting tired of being known as the dead kid’s brother,’” LaChapelle said. “For a while we did a lot of speaking engagements. People would say, instead of ‘What’s your name?’ it was, ‘Oh, you’re the one whose brother got killed.’ It was wearing on him.”

Peña didn’t withdraw even then.

He met regularly with Javier’s friends, took youth groups camping to Yosemite National Park, talked to others at schools and in parks. He waited on justice even as he began to study it.

Awaiting a celebration

Now, two of three men believed to be involved in Javier’s death face prison time. A judge could sentence one of them to 44 years to life in prison Wednesday.

Peña plans to address him directly in court, call him cowardly for instigating Javier’s death, lament “the type of hurt that I wouldn’t wish on my own worst enemy because of its debilitating effects on the will and the damage to one’s soul.”

The gang member who apparently shot Javier in the street before his group fled in some cars remains at large.